РефератыИностранный языкDeDescartes And Berkeley On Skepticism About The

Descartes And Berkeley On Skepticism About The

Senses Essay, Research Paper


Descartes and Berkeley on Skepticism About the Senses


The philosophers Geroge Berkeley and Renee Descartes both had


strong opinions on skepticism about the senses. In this paper, I


will explain their philosophies and why they are different and


then evaluate them.


In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes suggests


that the senses are like a friend who has lied to you once and


whom you therefore cannot trust, at least not until you?ve


proven that he or she is not an evil genius. The possibility of


an evil genius making everything a dream keeps Descartes awake


all night. He thinks he can?t trust his senses because of this.


He also considers a piece of wax. He claims that in the case of


the wax, the senses can only see changes. The senses cannot see


things that stay the same. So if he had not melted the wax, he?d


never know it was there. It is not the senses, or the mind, but


the imagination that does this. He therefore grasps what the wax


is in itself after he?s melted it. Since his senses could not


have melted the wax, it follows that the senses do not allow us


to know anything about what things essentially are in


themselves. Descartes doesn?t think we can trust our senses, but


he is not a skeptic. Descartes defines skepticism as the belief


that the evil genius makes us believe everything falsely. But


Descartes thinks that the evil genius can?t make us believe


everything falsely, because some people believe that God exists


and some people don?t believe that God exists, and they can?t


both be wrong. In his own case, Descartes thinks he can prove


that God exists because God?s essence is in his existence. To be


perfect, something must be God, and to be God, the essence of


something has to be existing.


In the book Three Dialogues Between Philonous and Hylas,


Berkeley, who?s name used to be spelled Barkley, claims that


?scepticism? is the last refuge of atheists and philosophers. He


is not a sceptic, because only someone with a strange


philosophical belief in material substance could be a sceptic.


But scepticism is different then skepticism, and Berkeley is a


skeptic, because he does not believe in matter. Sceptics believe


in matter, skeptics do not. In the book, Berkeley wears a


mouthpiece na

med Philonous. Philonous has a friend Hylas, and


Hylas tries to convince Philonous (Berkeley) that scepticism is


true. To do this, he says that matter must exist, because if


matter didn?t exist then we could not trust our senses. But


Philonous responds by saying that the only things we can be


deceived about are sensible things. Therefore, since scepticism


is not true, matter does not exist. Philonous also gives his


?Master Argument? against matter by saying that Hylas cannot


conceive of anything that exists except for his own mind, and


therefore since Hylas doesn?t believe in his own mind, Hylas


must be wrong. Of course, Philonous thinks Hylas is wrong about


everything. Especially about scepticism and skepticism. Berkeley


goes on to argue that everything I perceive is just an idea in


my head. Therefore, nothing is real, and skepticism is true. But


Berkeley doesn?t believe in an evil genius, because he thinks


that Descartes is the evil genius, and he doesn?t believe in


anything Descartes says.


So skepticism and doubt are a major theme in the philosophy


of Descartes and Berkeley. Descartes proves that skepticism is


wrong by refuting the evil genius. Berkeley proves that


scepticism is wrong by proving that Hylas cannot know anything,


and therefore that skepticism is true instead. Who do I believe?


I think that both dead philosophers are dead wrong. Descartes


tries to prove that the wax is not perceived by the senses,


because the wax needs to melt to be perceived, and his senses


cannot melt the wax. But superman, with his heat vision, could


melt wax with his sight. Of course, Descartes is not superman,


but this could be a deception of the evil genius. Maybe


Descartes has all sorts of powers he does not know about.


Berkeley, however, is even easier to refute. According to


Berkeley, everything I perceive is just an idea in my mind, and


therefore, I can get rid of them whenever I want. But Berkeley?s


book and all the arguments in them are just ideas in my mind,


and therefore if I don?t think about them, they don?t exist. But


if an argument is a sound argument, it has to be true all the


time. Therefore, none of his arguments could be sound. As for


myself, I think I can trust my senses. Neither scepticism nor


skepticism is true.


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